Daijiworld Media Network

Raipur, Jun 24: A 37-year-old gang-rape victim accused an investigating officer of demanding sexual favors in return for a thorough probe. In a bizarre turn of events, the police have now arrested the woman along with her male friend and also named an ‘anonymous’ lawyer and have charged them with “cheating”.

On February 21, the woman alleged that she was raped at gunpoint by two men who offered to drop her home.

The woman said she promptly went to Rampur Ganj Police Station in Uttar Pradesh, to lodge an FIR, however the complaint was not registered. Later, she approached the local court that directed the jurisdictional police to lodge the FIR against the woman’s plea.

The police then booked two suspects Sattar Ahmed and Ameer Ahmed under Sections 376 (D), 323, 506 of the IPC on charges of gang-rape, criminal intimidation.

The inquiry of the gang-rape case was handed over to sub-inspector Jai Prakash Singh of Rampur Ganj police station. But the woman alleged that the investigation officer called her phone and demanded sexual favours in return for the arrest of the suspects, but when the woman turned down his demands, the cop filed a closure report to her complaint.

The woman then visited the Rampur superintendent of police and handed a CD containing recorded conversations with SI Jai Prakash Singh. The SP directed station house officer Revendra Pratap Singh – the immediate superior of the former investigation officer to lead the probe. However, SHO Ravendra in a matter of two days submitted in his report that the voice in the CD was not of the SI but of the woman’s male friend.

Ravendra further candidly admitted that no forensic test was conducted on the CD. "No forensic test was required in the case because it has been proved that a phone we recovered was the one that was used to make the call which the woman recorded. It was made by her male friend,” says Revendra Pratap Singh in a press conference.

Rampur SP Vipin Tada further added that the woman and her male friend had hatched a criminal conspiracy against the sub-inspector to malign police's reputation. “In the CD with the alleged telephonic conversation between her and the SI, the voice of the man she is speaking with does not match the officer's," he added.

Along with the woman and her male friend, an unidentified lawyer has also been included in the FIR by the police. This has irked a section of lawyers in the district.

"How the police are trying to implicate a lawyer in the case is a matter of grave concern for the judicial system. The entire Bar Council stands with the lawyer and we will raise the issue with UP CM Yogi Adiyanath," says senior advocate, member and former president of Bar Council of UP Imran Mahbood Khan.